Last week Australia-raised, New York-based singer-songwriter Emmi shared her newest single “Drum.” Today she shares a visualizer for the track. Shot by Joe Connor (Sam Smith, Rolling Stones, Coldplay), he notes that Emmi is “an alien genius with the voice of a God.” In the clip Emmi appears as various apparitions of all the characters in Macbeth, serving as an introduction to her forthcoming project Players. 

“All the world’s a stage,” mused William Shakespeare in times past. “And all the men and women merely players.” It’s a particularly pertinent quote for Emmi whose single “Drum” is the first offering from her forthcoming concept project Players – a collection of epic pop songs inspired by the characters of Shakespeare’s plays, but repurposed for our times. 

“Drum,” a cacophonous, percussion-heavy banger opens the show and is based on the three witches of Macbeth. Taking the pop nous of Taylor Swift, channeling Kate Bush and then bolting it onto sinister, Arca-esque beats, the song perfectly reads the room of these times, reminding us all “no one’s getting out of here alive, so bang a drum!” But existentialism, Shakespeare and witches aside, there was a more personal meaning behind it. “This song is really a message to myself – ‘Step into the spotlight, don’t be so shy. I know you love the feeling.’ I’ve wasted years feeling too anxious to be myself in my work for fear of opinions of people I don’t even know. This single is me shaking that shit off and saying…’Fuck it. We may not have tomorrow. So this is me! With orchestras!” 

Emmi’s early singles earned her early fans in the likes of Taylor Swift, Elton John, and BBC Radio 1’s Greg James. Two platinum selling features later she landed a movie role as a singing goblin in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. Despite the warm welcome, however, Emmi made the unusual decision to vanish, no sooner than she had appeared. “Deep down, I knew I was only scratching the surface of my creativity with those first few songs. I spent so much time at the beginning asking myself “Who do I need to be to fit in to the pop world? What do they want to hear?” that there was barely any of me left in my own work. Eventually I took hold of myself and asked, “What do you need pop to be to fit you? What do you want to say?”. That’s when I started to think like an artist.” 

3 years later Emmi returns with a wealth of songs and stories to set free, with ‘Drum’ proving a key song in the project and a fitting first taste of Emmi’s newfound freedom and sound. “It took three weeks and about seventeen rewrites, but that’s when I truly heard myself for the first time.” In four minutes, Emmi had managed to bottle everything about her character – the performer, the dramatist, the lover, the show-off – into music she could really believe in.